The onrushing AI era was supposed to create boom times for great gadgets. Not long ago, analysts were predicting that Apple Intelligence would start a “supercycle” of smartphone upgrades, with tons of new AI features compelling people to buy them. Amazon and Google and others were explaining how their ecosystems of devices would make computing seamless, natural, and personal. Startups were flooding the market with ChatGPT-powered gadgets, so you’d never be out of touch. AI was going to make every gadget great, and every gadget was going to change to embrace the AI world.
This whole promise hinged on the idea that Siri, Alexa, Gemini, ChatGPT, and other chatbots had gotten so good, they’d change how we do everything. Typing and tapping would soon be passé, all replaced by multimodal, omnipresent AI helpers. You wouldn’t need to do things yourself; you’d just tell your assistant what you need, and it would tap into the whole world of apps and information to do it for you. Tech companies large and small have been betting on virtual assistants for more than a decade, to little avail. But this new generation of AI was going to change things.
There was just one problem with the whole theory: the tech still doesn’t work. Chatbots may be fun to talk to and an occasionally useful replacement for Google, but truly game-changing virtual assistants are nowhere close to ready. And without them, the gadget revolution we were promised has utterly failed to materialize.
In the meantime, the tech industry allowed itself to be so distracted by these shiny language models that it basically stopped trying to make otherwise good gadgets. Some companies have more or less stopped making new things altogether, waiting for AI to be good enough before it ships. Others have resorted to shipping more iterative, less interesting upgrades because they have run out of ideas other than “put AI in it.” That has made the post-ChatGPT product cycle bland and boring, in a moment that could otherwise have been incredibly exciting. AI isn’t good enough, and it’s dragging everything else down with it.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/spnT6
This has been a huge let down. Thought at the very least home assistants which are marginally useful could become less infuriating with an intelligence boost, but not at all. I’d be happy if I could simply upload a damn 64 Kb thesaurus at this point to my alexa so she would not ignore everything I say if I don’t remember the exact right commands.
Sounds like you should check out Homeassistant.
Yeah maybe. Switching infrastructure would be a headache and expensive though. Last I checked the off the shelf versions which is how I would want to start at least didn’t have wifi capability. Is there a turnkey version that does now?
Yeah, ODROID partnered with them to create an off the shelf product. It’s pretty pricy, though, but honestly you could run it on a pi 3b+ for pretty cheap.